Thank you, Fuji!
We want very quickly to thank Fuji Lozada for his contributions in August to the site. We hope to introduce future guests in the coming weeks.
Strong is Thomas Strong, lecturer in the department of anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He has previously held teaching and/or research posts at the University of Helsinki, the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Wisconsin, and (oddly enough) the American Academy of Ophthalmology. His publications include essays on the symbolism of blood and body in the U.S. and elsewhere, new cross-disciplinary work on kinship, and ideas of culture loss and bodily detumescence amongst the Dano-speakers of Papua New Guinea's eastern highlands province. His on-going research in PNG concerns transformations in sociality, gender relations, and personhood following the mid-twentieth-century repudiation of the traditional men's cult in the upper Asaro valley. His other interests include 'brand' as an ethnographic and analytic concept, HIV/AIDS (especially in the U.S. gay male community), and celebrity/fame.
Survival International have recently started a campaign to indicate to the media that when words are used to describe indigenous peoples that imply an inferiority in that culture, this should be pointed out.
Why are you called ‘Savage’ minds?
Historically speaking, now it is time to stop using this word…
Thank you,
Carol McQuire
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Carol,
You and SI would be hard-pressed to find any of the Savage Minds crew using “savage” to refer to any group of people, in or out of the White House. The title of this site refers to the Claude Levi-Strauss book entitled, in French, “La Pense’e Sauvage”, which translates into English as “Savage Minds”, “Wild Thoughts”, “The Savage Mind”, “The Mind of the Savage”, or “Wild Pansies” (note the flowers in our header). We chose this title for a number of reasons (ironically you chose to put your comment on a post by an author who was not part of SM at the time, so it’s not his fault). In part, it’s an homage to a leading figure i the field, with all the troublesome implications that his work — and anyone’s work — carries with it. Second, we had already agreed on “Notes and Queries” (a work of far more staggering racism, viewed from today’s perspective, than The Savage Mind!) with no small degree of irony, mingled with no small degree of nostalgia for an era whe tips about fieldwork and ideas about human diversity were circulated by gentlemen scholars; “Savage Minds” feeds the same sense of irony and nostalgia. Third, of course, we’d like to think that “Savage Minds” sums up the sense of critical inquiry that fueled the founding of the site.
I’m sure some of the other SM’ers might have their own takes on what “Savage Minds” means. I’m just as sure that every one of us has done our part — if nto more than our part — as teachers, writers, and members of our various communities, to point out the history of ethnocentrism and racism that informs the casual use of the word “savage”.
Now, if you’d like to discuss Survival International’s use of the word “tribal” in their tagline… (Not to mention “Bushmen”. BUSHMEN!!!)
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HI oneman,
Just seen your witty and articulate reply – thank you!
Wherever we look – ripples of contradiction…Sorry to hear there was ‘nostalgia’ for those gentlemen – perhaps it is but an idle dream… When I studied with Edmund Leach, most of his stories were set during war time and didn’t Malinowski just get bored because they left him behind in the war?
;)
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